It’s been a big week, Chez Honey&Ollie. We open our market stall at Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles in just 22 short days.

After a lot of hemming and hawing over paint chips, we headed over to Home Depot for another pass at yet more paint chips. In a supreme moment of “fuck it.” I decided that I was just gonna bite the bullet and make a decision and COMMIT to my market stall wall color. Which, naturally, I have been second guessing ever since I told them to go ahead and mix the colors. If you’re curious, you can see the paint chip here. It’s in the “Potter’s Clay” section, and the color scheme is called “Raw Sugar.”

To prove the depths of my commitment, I figured I’d best get something to put the paint on the walls with. So I did that. And then, while we were there, I figured I’d probably better commit to shelves and brackets, which we are building ourselves thank-you-very-much. So after much hemming and hawing (again) over corbels and brackets and wrought iron and wood, we decided on wooden brackets and plank shelves over a pre-fab shelving system.

This is what the inside of my market stall looks like, when it is in pieces in the boot of my car.

After we got it home, I discovered how much sanding is involved when you are dealing with wood shelves and brackets. To be fair, Captain Sexypants has done 99.99999% of the sanding, but he did show me how to use a rotary sander yesterday and that was pretty fun, if a bit vibratey and loud. Speaking of The Infamous Captain Sexypants, he’s swell and we have a date with some 220 sandpaper and some brackets, on Sunday.

I think we’re going to go all out and start applying wood stain too, if we get that far.

This is a test display, in which Our Heroine (me) learns why the directions on the can say “go with the grain of the wood and don’t let it get all dribbly” and not “just slop it on any old direction.” And it is also why (when you pick up the brush and start slopping and it gets all dribbly) The Infamous Captain Sexypants splutters and then sighs quietly and starts banging his head against the workbench (because like, three days of sanding? Now slopped all over). The reason why is, because it’s, you know, STAIN. And it stains in the direction you put it on. This is also why they say “test on a spare piece of wood” and not “just wing it right on the piece of wood you plan to put in your store with product on it.”

I think I’m going to take this moment to confess that I have never knit a swatch to check gauge in my life.

Nor have I ever done a patch test when coloring my hair.

I like to live dangerously.

I’m fairly sure that, out of respect to all those days of sanding and tICS’s craftsmanship, this post and I are going to be spending some quality re-sanding and re-applying stain time, come Sunday.

But I’m digressing. The point of all this is pretty simple. Sometimes you have to just jump in, feet first. Because you can sit there on the edge and hem and haw and fuss for days, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Once they start mixing that paint? Once the stain is on the wood? Once the bags are in the car? You’re in. You’re moving. You’re swimming. There’s no turning back in midair, you’ve got no choice but to hit the water and go. Sure you might have a panic attack on the 210 on the way home from Home Depot and need to pop a Xanax in rush hour traffic, but you know, at least you’ll be popping a Xanax because you are doing something AWESOME and amazing and generative.

So just go. DO it. Jump in. Into whatever it is that you are dreaming about. You’ll be ever so glad that you did.

One Response to 22 Days: Sometimes ya gotta jump in with both feet

I wish I lived closer so I could come see your store once it’s open. The next time I’m in the area, I will!!

You’re right about jumping in. Yesterday I started gluing the pebbles onto the cement board for the gorgon mosaic I’m making for my husband. It terrified me to start it but it’ll be a little bit easier to keep working on it now that I have.

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